Hotel Honolulu

33 Happy Funeral

The only difference between a Hawaiian wedding and a Hawaiian funeral, Buddy Hamstra said, was that there was one less person singing at the funeral. How could I laugh when he was telling me this at his own wife's funeral? Though he knew he had shocked me, he slugged me on the arm and said it again, much louder.

"Want to come to my wife's funeral?" he had asked me, then he howled, "Hey, that's a dynamite pickup line!"

Loudness was comedy to him, and his howl was whiffy with alcohol. He was so drunk that day he was staggering, but that was comedy too. All human frailty was funny to Buddy, especially his own, and death was just a practical joke. He demanded I take the day off to attend.

Stella's coffin was on the beach, so festooned with big bright edible- looking flowers it looked like a salad bar. The mourners, all hot-faced people in shorts, stood barefoot in the sand, singing and twitching their damp aloha shirts — Buddy's dusky children by his islander wives, his two grandchildren, surfers, strippers, illegal immigrants, Boogie-boarders and aunties, as well as Buddy's rascally pals and old business cronies, leathery fishermen and opihi pickers, and all Stella's family from the mainland. Their bare feet, as lumpy and expressive as faces, said everything about their lives. Buddy's children had a common characteristic: If they didn't

understand something, they opened their mouths. Death was the sort of befuddlement that made them slack-jawed.

It was one of those brilliant orchidaceous days on the North Shore of Oahu, under the towering palms. A silky breeze lisped through the needles of the ironwoods edging Sunset Beach. The cliffs behind us were as dark and leafy as spinach. Somewhere nearby a radio was playing, an insolent voice giving a weather report and then a sales jingle about fast food in Honolulu, but it was just more comedy for Buddy. Down at the beach, a man was casting into the surf, working his fishing rod like a coach whip. The breeze carried a scent of flowers. The greeny-blue Pacific, the dazzling sunlight, the new blossoms — it was all bright with life, and the tears on the cheeks of the dark fresh-faced people were like another aspect of their health.

Just offshore, the smooth-sided waves at Banzai Pipeline were rising and bursting toward us, collapsing loudly, dissolving in thick froth and fizz. While the rest of the mourners sang, the surfers kept glancing back.

"The Pipe's cranking," one said. He turned away from Stella's coffin.

"It was junk this morning," another said.

"I'm stoked," the first one said. "Look at Piggy in the tube."

A surfer in gleaming shorts, braced on his board, traveled under the curling lip of the large wave, arms outspread, his head washed by foam.

Then the singing stopped and Buddy tramped forward on the sand, looking unsteady. Several people snuffled. Melveen, his eldest daughter, blew her nose, a rat-a-tat that turned heads. Garlands of leis were piled to Buddy's ears, and he held a glass of vodka in one hand and simpered as though he were going to burst into song.

"Stella's not mucky. She's watching us, she's listening, and she's huhu because some of you are crying." Buddy said. "Stop crying over her wooden kimono. Put away the Kleenex — she's not mucky!"

He had the snorting stubbornness of a huge hairy animal, with an important belly, a raspy voice, and a Tahitian tattoo, a plump blue fish picked out on his arm, because of his nickname, Tuna.

"Funny thing happened on our honeymoon," he said, stepping close to his wife's coffin. The coffin tilted as he hooked his foot on one of the sinking sawhorses that propped it up. "This was in Moorea."

He told a story about his arrival at the hotel on the little island off Papeete, where he noticed that everyone was wearing the same T-shirt — the gatekeeper, the gardeners, the Tahitians Weedwacking the lawn, the women at Reception, the room boy, the bar help, the waiters. The image on the front of each T-shirt was indistinct, but exactly the same — perhaps a political figure? No, up close it was a furiously scowling Polynesian woman, a silkscreened portrait of Momi, the second Mrs. Buddy Hamstra.

"Thanks, needledick," he said, leaning over Stella's corpse to speak to one of the rascals, Earl Willis, who had sent two hundred Momi-face T- shirts all the way to Moorea. "That's when Stella realized she was marrying trouble. Big pilikia!"

"You cemented up my lua and stuck a stop sign in it," Willis said. "I couldn't shee-shee."

"Because you're a needledick," Buddy said. "Hey, people, lay off the crying!"

The singing resumed. The surfers distracted me, and looking out toward the ocean I saw a pod of whales, plumes rising from their blowholes, as they made their seasonal way to Kauai. I thought, I am happy. It seemed to me that this was what a funeral ought to be. On this beautiful day I saw continuity, an eternal return, only harmony. Nothing died.

After that song, Buddy said, "Anyone hungry? We got fresh opihi and Spam musubi and lots of good grinds in the house. Hey, let's eat!"

We were glad he was drunk. It dulled the pain. It set an example. Pretty soon everyone was drunk, and when I looked back and saw Stella's coffin, casting a black boxy shadow on the white sand, I remembered what Buddy had said, about there being only one person at a funeral who was not singing.

When the funeral turned into a party, I saw four goldfish swimming in every hopper in the house.

"Buddy always does that when people are drinking," a man said, seeing my puzzled face as I left the little room. To be helpful he added, "Everyone's using the mango tree."

He introduced himself as Royce Lionberg. He said he lived on the bluff behind the beach. There was something about him, his serenity perhaps, his gentle smile, his apparent health, his confident look of achievement, that made me envy him. He seemed very happy.

The music was loud and Buddy was dancing with one of Stella's old girlfriends. The dark woman had long hair and a corona of pretty flowers on her head. She performed a smiling, sinuous hula for Buddy, who looked terrible: slow, fat, breathless, his eyes glazed and heavy-lidded with alcohol. At the time, I put it down to bewilderment and suppressed grief. Then he saw me.

"Got a minute? Meet me upstairs. I want to show you something."

A little while later, I found him in his large bedroom, lying in his carved four-poster in front of a big-screen television set. He had a small, heart-shaped object in one hand and the remote-control switch in the other.

"Watch," he said, and worked the remote with his thumb.

Over the sound of romantic music came the title, Great Expectations.

"Is this by Charles Dickens?"

"The hell's that supposed to mean?" Buddy said. He had no idea.

On the screen, a young toothy Filipino woman, her shiny shoulders showing above her summer dress, was sitting in a large wicker chair.

My name is Isis Rubaga, but my friends call me Pinky. I like music, dancing, and reading. I love God and my family. Two sisters, four brothers. Mother. Father is passed on.

Offscreen, a whispery prompting voice said, And what sort of man would you like to meet?

A kind man. Age is not important. He can be thirty or even sixty, it does not matter. But a good heart, that is the most important thing.

The girl named Pinky smiled shyly as she talked, and she laughed each time she was asked a question. Though she was never at a loss for words, she was clearly nervous, but her nervousness and her laughter seemed to reveal a distinct innocence. She had big dark doe eyes, full lips, slightly protruding teeth, and rich black hair that tumbled onto her shoulders.

"Twenty-three years old," Buddy said. "She's a real coconut girl."

He was still in his big bed but had raised himself up a bit, and now he had a drink in his hand instead of the remote. Almost without an education, he preened himself on his ignorance the way others preened themselves on their erudition, believing that it licensed him in his recklessness. Without any knowledge of history, he was somehow able through his natural ruttishness to reinvent the complex and indulgent habits of an Eastern potentate, one of those Ottoman pashas, right down to holding court halfnaked in his sumptuous bedroom.

"I'm seeing her in Manila," he said. "And Stella approves, don't you, Mama?"

With that, he shook the heart-shaped object in his left hand.

"Her ashes," he explained, smiling, seeming to respond to words of encouragement to which I was deaf. "Reason being, coffin's empty."

The videotape was still playing — other girls, in frilly dresses, interviewed in the same wicker chair. They all looked pretty, but none was as young or as winsome as Isis "Pinky" Rubaga.

A few days before he flew to Manila, Buddy called me and said, "I'm giving a party. I want to borrow Peewee. You come too. It's just guys."

Underlying Buddy's boisterous sense of occasion was his innocent superstition that a loud sendoff with great food was a guarantee his trip would be a success. We closed the hotel kitchen early and I drove Peewee to the North Shore, where he set to work making Buddy's favorite meal: Peewee's signature Serious Flu Symptoms Chili, garlic bread, and Caesar salad. Dessert was haupia cake with fresh Big Island strawberries and hot fudge sundaes. Buddy's cronies were there — Sam Sandford, Willis, Sparky Lemmo, Royce Lionberg, and some others. Peewee spent most of the time serving the meal, while Buddy, uncharacteristically, made himself useful with the pepper mill.

"Fresh-ground pepper? Fresh-ground pepper?"

He suggested pepper on the chili, pepper on the salad, and be said that nothing was better on fresh strawberries than ground pepper. To please him — and it seemed we were always trying to please Buddy — we accepted his offers of fresh-ground pepper.

"That pepper is special," he said at the end of the meal. "You all know what peppercorns look like." He screwed the cap off the pepper mill and tapped a gray dusty substance onto the table. "Go ahead, taste it."

Peewee wet his finger, poked it, and put it on his tongue. He said, "Ashes."

"It's Stella!" Buddy said, and laughing — his laughter proved he was drunk — he showed us the heart-shaped container that had held her ashes. Empty.